Monday, September 28, 2015

The "Compassionate" Free Market

Christian Schneider, calumnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other corporate media propaganda sites, is struggling with what to do with himself ever since Scott Walker drove himself out of the presidential race even faster than most people had guessed.  Apparently, Schneider, has decided to take up shark jumping to fill his time.

In Sunday's paper, Schneider has his regular submission of bovine excretement in which he laments the phrase "compassionate conservatism." Schneider's faux outrage stems from the fact that Ohio Governor John Kasich accepted federal funding to expand Obamacare.

The horror! Making sure tens of thousands of vulnerable people get affordable health care coverage! How absolutely cold-blooded!

Ah, but Schneider was just warming up. He went on to actually try to argue that the free market system - aka plantation economics - is actually compassionate. No, really!
Actual conservatives already understand that their ideology is intrinsically compassionate.

It is compassionate, for instance, to allow parents to choose where and how their children are being educated, rather than sentencing them to failing government schools.
So, according to Schneider, instead of allowing kids to get a good education from the best teachers, it's more compassionate to send our children to private schools that close nine days into the school year, leaving families scrambling to get their kids into underfunded public schools.

Apparently, Republicans feel so much compassion for our children that they would go along with Chris Abele's scheme to privatize all the schools, regardless of the fact that the parents don't want it. What was that about free markets and choice?

Schneider continues along his flight of fancy with this:
It is compassionate to allow taxpayers to keep more of their own money to run their families as they see fit.
Hmm, my taxes went up by nearly 150% of what they were before Walker took over and installed his plantation economic agenda. And that's not even mentioning the tens of thousands of dollars that was cut from my take home pay. And let's not forget that the same economic agenda that Schneider is praising led Wisconsin to have the biggest drop in middle class families. Aren't you feeling all warm and tingly from all that compassion?
Then there's this:
It is compassionate to allow small businesses to be free of regulation and taxation so they can hire more employees and pay them better wages.
Ooh, we're already repeating ourselves here, but Wisconsinites, under the plantation economics agenda Schneider is pushing, is not better, hence that shrinking middle class. But hey, surely it's compassionate to allow companies like Menards to just dump hazardous wastes into our drinking water, right? Giving people cancer and other health problems is compassionate, right?

What says "I care about you" more than a wealthy CEO exploiting his workers by cutting their pay and benefits and making their worksites less safe?

Then Schneider gets to the best one yet:
And compassion isn't just economic. It is charitable to allow individuals to carry weapons to protect themselves if they feel they are in danger from an uncompassionate convict.
And if there aren't any uncompassionate convicts around, one could just shoot two year olds or revictimize victims that one is compassionately trying to help.

And to point out that homes with guns are actually less safe, well, that's just plain unfeeling and hard-hearted.

One shouldn't blame Schneider for being overly zealous in promoting the plantation economic agenda of his dark money overlords. I'm sure that Schneider, like his fallen hero Walker, simply cares too much.

1 comment:

  1. Underfund an institution, then begin a campaign of negative press and then privatize it for profit is a formula that has worked successfully to the financial benefit of a few in Wisconsin over and over again

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